Max Planck Society

12/05/2026

For many people today, botanical knowledge doesn’t go much beyond daisies, buttercups, and dandelions. But an app is changing that. Flora Incognita can identify almost any plant within seconds. Jana Wäldchen of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena has played a key role in developing this -based , which also provides valuable data on the state of nature.

https://www.mpg.de/26484618/flora-incognita

07/05/2026

"My favourite telescope − the '100m dish', as we affectionately call it − is the second largest freely movable radio telescope in the world. It is located in the Eifel mountain range, near Bad Münstereifel-Effelsberg, and helps us to observe and better understand the radio sky and its fascinating phenomena.

I am particularly interested in supermassive black holes in the centres of distant galaxies. Our Milky Way also contains such a black hole, with four million solar masses. Black holes can’t be directly observed. The enormous gravity prevents information or light from escaping. The event horizon is the limit for us − we can’t see beyond it. However, it is possible to take a snapshot of the gas flowing around the black hole. This allows you to see a kind of shadow of the black hole. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration achieved this for the first time in 2019 − it remains a sensational achievement to this day. As part of the collaboration, I was allowed to show the image to a film crew in the control room of the 100m dish for the first time on the day it was made public.

Since then I have been looking for something very special: a binary black hole. Let's see what else the 100m dish will tell us in the future." (Silke Britzen, Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy)

30/04/2026

🌕Once in a blue moon, there are two full moons! 🌕😉

What is the story behind the Blue Moon and how did it get its name? When can you see the next one in 2026? Spoiler: In May, a Blue Moon can be seen in Germany – on May 1st and 31st, 2026. https://www.space.com/blue-moon-what-is-it-2026

Earth will experience a Blue Moon in 2026.

24/04/2026

We are delighted to witness the official launch of the Max Planck – Singapore Centres at NTU during the visit of Max Planck Society President, Professor Patrick Cramer.

By combining German research excellence with Singapore’s vibrant innovation ecosystem, these centres focusing on Data-Driven Chemistry and Biocultural Worlding will tackle global challenges through interdisciplinary brilliance.

From pioneering AI-driven molecular science to exploring the intersection of culture and environment, this collaboration underscores our commitment to excellence and sustainable progress. We celebrate this deepening of our bilateral relations and the bright future of shared discovery. 🇩🇪🇸🇬

23/04/2026

Happy birthday to our favourite physicist – and yes, we may not be TOTALLY impartial...! 😉Happy birthday🎂 Max Planck! Born in Kiel on April 23, 1858, the physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate, quantum trailblazer (as well as gifted pianist & intrepid mountaineer!) fundamentally changed our understanding of energy, radiation, and matter. Illustration: Niels Schröder

22/04/2026

Just a quick reminder that this singular, beautiful, blue & white bauble is our shared home. May we keep it safe. The iconic "Earthrise" image, one of the most famous photos ever taken, was captured by astronaut Bill Anders on Dec. 24, 1968 from the Apollo 8 spacecraft.

20/04/2026

Two new Max Planck Centers at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore deepen our collaboration with in data-driven and in research on , culture, and knowledge - bringing together complementary strengths to enable discoveries no institution could achieve alone.

https://www.mpg.de/26395088/with-its-first-two-max-planck-centers-in-singapore-the-max-planck-society-is-now-also-present-in-southeast-asia

16/04/2026

Part of our president's trip to took him to EarthLab, part of the vast Science City outside Beijing, which boasts the world's highest density of research infrastructure.

is a research infrastructure for Earth system science, housing, among other things, one of the most powerful supercomputer platforms for climate and atmospheric research. Here, vast amounts of data from observations and simulations are combined and translated into models to better understand how air pollution, weather, and are interconnected. Against this backdrop, it is also relevant that China is currently investing heavily in electromobility and renewable energies to reduce CO2 emissions and air pollution, particularly particulate matter.

The new Max Planck Center MAC-AIR, which we inaugurated together with our partners during this trip, is located right here. Among those involved are the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie. At the Center, researchers will work closely together, combining measurements with model calculations on the EarthLab infrastructure.

What makes this collaboration particularly special are the local conditions. In China, environmental and atmospheric conditions are changing very rapidly in many places. This allows for insights that are hardly possible elsewhere and are highly relevant to research on the global climate as a whole.

30/03/2026

Spring is coming 💜 The pretty-in-purple Pasque flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris) is now a rare plant, restricted to just a few chalk and limestone grasslands. Steeped in legend, it flowers at Easter, so is known as the 'anemone of Passiontide'.

via Flora Incognita

Frühling gesucht und gefunden 💜
Küchenschelle (Pulsatilla vulgaris)
🌷

22/03/2026

: Nearly 300 years – that’s how long it took the Royal Society to elect its first female Fellows. (Okay, we don’t want to exaggerate: it was really "only" 285 years!) 😉😁

81 years ago today, on March 22, 1945, Marjory Stephenson & Kathleen Lonsdale finally broke that glass ceiling. 🥂✨In this interview, biochemist Maren Nattermann reflects on Stephenson’s legacy as the pioneer of chemical microbiology & her foundational work in bacterial metabolism.

Maren also shares insights into her own work as a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology – and why she can't walk past a drugstore vitamin aisle without smiling! 💊🧪😉️

19/03/2026

We honestly couldn't be any more excited! 🙃 🎉Gerd Faltings, our director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for in Bonn, has been honoured with the 2026 Abel Prize - an annual mathematics lifetime-achievement award often called the “Nobel Prize of math for his number theory work - huge congratulations! 🤗

Gerd Faltings proved a conjecture that had been unsolved for six decades, using connections between numbers and geometry.